Apr. 29--Shaun Tubbins couldn't wait to make an appearance at Women and Children's Hospital, so he left the womb way early -- almost four months early.
He was as tiny as he was premature. Just 1 pound 8 ounces, measuring 12 inches long.
So Shaun spent the next three months in the hospital's Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
His experience there made such an impression on his mother, Shaina Martinez, that she made a career decision based on the care he had received there.
While still in Children's following Shaun's birth on Nov. 21, 2006, his mother decided that she wanted to return to the NICU when she became a nurse.
So Martinez began her nursing career there last June 11.
Meet Shaina Martinez, who has a perspective that few can share of the NICU -- as a grateful parent and now a caring nurse.
"I feel like this is a way of giving back," Martinez said in her Lower West Side apartment. "The nurses there are so caring and loving and so helpful to the parents. They helped my baby, so I want to help other people's children as well."
Martinez's own career path, as a D'Youville College nursing student, may have saved her baby.
As a senior doing her clinical rotation at Children's, Martinez decided to get a checkup in her sixth month of pregnancy.
She quickly learned that her baby was at great risk. "I was scared," she remembered. "Here I am, almost six
months pregnant, and I've bonded with the baby, and he's going to come early, or he may not make it."
After about 10 days of total bed rest and IV fluids and close monitoring, Martinez gave birth to Shaun, in her 24th week of pregnancy.
She recalled her first sight of him, when she was wheeled down on a gurney to see him.
"I thought, 'He's so small.' I saw his little muscles. He was almost transparent."
Shaun underwent multiple blood transfusions. He was in a heated incubator. He was on a ventilator for weeks. And he required emergency surgery at three to four weeks old, when his intestines broke open.
And yet his mother and father, Rashaun Tubbins, remained optimistic -- whether it was their nature, their confidence in the nurses' and doctors' vigilant care or their son's indomitable spirit. Or all three.
"I just felt like he was a fighter," Martinez said. "He's very resilient. Even now, if he falls down, he gets right back up."
As a nurse in a life-and-death unit, Martinez is careful not to
overstep her bounds and tell her life story to every parent.
"I don't want to tell them my son was in there, because his situation may not be everybody's situation," she said. "I don't want to give them any false hope."
But her own experience gives her a sense of optimism. And she knows what the parents are going through.
"I know the frustrations," she said. "I know the sadness they're going through. It helps me understand where they're coming from. Sometimes they're upset, and they take it out on the nurse. I say, 'I understand how you're feeling.' "
Martinez knows all too well the value of today's Kids Day, as both a nurse and a mother in a unit directly supported with funds generated by today's thousands of $1 donations.
"When you see outcomes like Shaun's, it shows you the great job that they do there," she said. "It's a special place."
So Martinez, juggling her job and her 17-month-old son, still planned to be out selling newspapers this morning.
"It's not really for me or for him," she said. "It's for other babies, to give them a chance."
gwarner@buffnews.com
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